Dhret spent her first few weeks as a courier bobbing along behind the other couriers as she learned to fly the routes they used to move across the family territory. The clerk that ruled the couriers’ schedules told Pod that he was responsible for training new recruits, so he spent her first week in the tower waiting for her while she fought with her bike or complaining loudly about the delays in the lounge while she sat in a corner scowling at him and turning crimson beneath her dusky complexion.

Things changed when she joined the card games they played while waiting in the lounge. They played for “points” they spent on favors from the other couriers and which she spent requesting other guides than Podmandu. Marroo didn’t object or complain when she asked to tag along, and he found himself chosen with greater and greater frequency until he stopped charging her the points she would have owed and began to expect her bobbing along behind him whenever he pedaled through the sky.

If Dhret lacked the one talent by which Podmandu, and Ajap by extension, judged the world there could be no denying the talent she did possess for destroying all of them at cards.

“You aren’t doing it right.” She told Ajap when he and Marroo sat facing her over the table in the lounge while they waited for a route. “You can’t just try to touch the heavens every hand. You have to plan your turns ahead.”

Ajap scowled at his fist of cards and threw the ten of roses as his lead for the turn. “I’ve been playing a long time you know.”

“Like an idiot.” Dhret replied. She played over him to take the point and Ajap’s scowl grew a little longer.

Marroo played off suit and Dhret scooped the pile then threw out the two of Hands which Ajap was forced to take, retaking the lead.

“See.” Dhret said as he pondered over his cards. “Now you’ll be forced to play high and just eat all our points.”

“How do you know?” Ajap asked. “You don’t know what’s in my hand.”

“I can count dummy,” Dhret said, “The lowest cards left in each suit are the two of lids, the five of swords, novice of hands, or adept of roses.”

Ajap played the two of lids as though it was a triumph and Dhret dropped the six of swords on it, followed by Marroo’s rose adept. Ajap’s face fell as he took the point again and he looked at his hand.

“If you knew how to count cards you could have won your bid,” Dhret said, “but you’re doing it wrong.”

“I know how to count.” Ajap snapped. He scowled and played the five of swords.

“Not with your shoes on.” Dhret played the three and Marroo played off suit again.

“What do you know.” Ajap said.

A familiar phased into the room through the ceiling and chimed to summon one of the couriers. Dhret tilted her head sideways to give a scowling Ajap a look.

“Looks like it’s your turn,” she said, “Or we can call this round in our favor.”

Ajap tossed his cards on the table. “Whatever.” He stood to follow the familiar. “I don’t even care anymore.”

The familiar bobbed and flashed then zipped out of the room while Ajap followed in tow.

When he was gone Dhret looked across the table at Marroo. “You’re not any better.” She said.

Marroo shrugged and dropped his cards onto the stack already on the table.

Dhret looked down at the cards and idly scooped them all together. She stacked them and continued to stare into space while her hands split and shuffled the deck of their own accord. He watched her hands throw them together then peel them apart, over and over, as though she’d practiced it a thousand times.

“Where did you learn?” He asked.

She looked up at him when he interrupted her thought stream and stared at him for a moment before she looked away while her hands continued their exercise. Slide the cards together, apart, together, apart. “My Da taught me.” She said. She frowned down at her shuffling hands and bridged the cards hard enough to make them snap like gunfire as they came together. “About the only thing he was ever good for.” She added after a pause. “Always good for a game of cards though. Seemed to think… well…” She snapped them together again as though to kill whatever line of thought they carried her down.

Marroo watched her hands. “Mine died,” he said, “couple of months ago, when we had that swarm.”

“Wish mine would…” She snapped the cards together again, too hard this time so part of the deck shot out of the deck to spray across the floor like blood from a wound. She cursed and bent to scoop them off the floor then shuffled the deck one more time and set it carefully in the middle of the table between them. She folded her hands and stared at the deck for a moment.

“I’m sorry.” She looked up at him.

He looked at the deck of cards. Shrugged.

Dhret looked away. “Did you get along?” She asked.

“No.” Marroo shook his head and looked up at her. “Seems, normal, up here.”

She looked at him uncomprehending.

“For couriers.” He added, then looked back at the deck of cards between them. “You read about all these happy families, in books, but, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one.”

Dhret snorted. “They exist.” She said. “You just don’t hear about them.”

Their eyes met across the cards and for a moment neither of them said anything. Eventually she broke their gaze and grabbed the chalk from the table to approach the board hanging on the wall with their points marked on them. She marked the change in score after Ajap’s bid but didn’t meet Marroo’s eyes as she returned to her chair and picked up the deck of cards again.

She shuffled, once, as though on reflex, then held them as she looked down at them without a word.

“Should we keep playing?” She finally asked. She looked up at him. “It’s not as fun with two players.”

Marroo just shrugged, and she dealt out the cards.

“It’s not like we have anything else to do.” She smiled at him, a quick, hesitant smile that never touched her eyes.

She picked up her own duties in the week that followed, graduated from his guidance, and the guidance of the others, and took off on her own into city’s skyline. They sky seemed lonelier without her. On his own routes above the factories and apartment buildings, markets and parks of the Iblanie territory, Marroo often caught himself listening for the whine of a bike that no longer followed him through the air or looking over his shoulder for the girl who’d followed him for most of two weeks. When they sat in the lounge he found his eyes drawn to her as she trashed the others at cards, or at the playground where she bobbed slowly through obstacles the others shot through with ease.

At night he found his thoughts turning to her instead of the books he read by the yellow light of his familiar in it’s lantern setting.

“I overheard her asking about you,” Betmo told him one evening while they did basic maintenance on their bikes on the lounge’s balcony, “The new girl. I’m pretty sure there were points involved, but I overheard her asking Cathay about you the other day.” He gave Marroo a calculating look over the seat of his bike while Marroo fiddled with a bolt on his bike that wasn’t really as loose as he pretended it was.

“Mixing work with pleasure is not a great idea.” Betmo told him. “I’ll give you that one for free. But, if you were thinking of doing anything about it, I’d do it soon, before one of the higher ups decides to make her the same offer Cathay received.”

He saw her later that day, during the courier’s shift change. His spirit dragged itself around her as though drawn by a magnet. It surrounded her even when Marroo wasn’t looking, soaking in the texture of the little flae of breath the burned at her core between sluggish meridians. Where his spirit went he found his eyes followed, regardless of his intention. When she looked at him and smiled he felt his breath ignite while his face tried to melt into a foolish grin.

He wanted to do something about it, but when he grinned her smile flickered. He froze as his breath recoiled from her, and his guts twisted into knots as she looked away.

He said nothing.

He said nothing when, in the following days, she asked him for little favors, like opening cans or tightening the knot of the Bandanna Cathay eventually gave her, things she could easily have done herself.

He said nothing when they met randomly in the halls outside the executive offices and she looked away, or she stared off silently into space while they sat alone on the balcony with their bikes.

He said nothing, and he stewed on it at night while he held a book cradled to his chest and he tried to understand and control the raging feeling inside his guts.

It might all be inside his head, but he couldn’t say nothing.

He forced himself, eventually, to say the things he had to say.

He asked her during the Ring Festival.

No one worked at the tower during the festival. Some sub-sects celebrated for a full week after the ring appeared in the sky, but the Iblanie tower waited until the black shape haloed the Core like a black iris against the golden sphere, turning it into a vast eye that surveyed the Bottom from North to South until the Midnight Plains lapped the ring to cast their city into shadow. Guests arrived in droves as the Night Plains groaned above the city. They filled the roof of the tower while waiters moved around with trays of drinks on carpets laid out special for the occasion and a band played from the top of a utility box decked out as a stage.

“We’ve never been invited to these,” Podmandu said as he sagged over what must have been his fifth drink at the couriers’ corner table, “Never. Do you know how long I’ve been doing this?” He looked at Marroo across the table in a bleary eyed stupor from the drugs in his drink. “They never invited the couriers.”

“Great party though.” Ajap replied from across the table.

Podmandu raised his drink with a smile. “Great party,” He enthused, “Wouldn’t miss it for all the worlds in all the heavens or the bottom itself.”

They were by far the shabbiest guests. The men around them wore tailored suits with bright robes while the women wore silk gowns that did more to reveal their wearers than cover them. Even the other “troglodytes”, pale skinned men and women with pale eyes pointed out to him by Cathay, wore expensive suits. Marroo still wore his grubby orange bandanna and the same clothes he’d put on two days before. He was pretty sure that even the guests on the other side of the roof could smell Podmandu. At least the couriers all shared a table.

Dhret and Betmo were the exceptions to the courier’s rule. Unlike Cathay, who, like Marroo and Podmandu, wore her usual bandanna and baggy robes, Dhret came in a simple black robe tied at the waist with a ribbon of red silk that seemed to glow as the night set. She could have worn it anywhere, and yet she stood out like a flower from a heap of trash among the couriers and spoke easily to with the waiters while the rest stumbled through their requests. Only Betmo looked as comfortable with the crowd, as well dressed as the other executives, shaking hands with the members of two different sub-sects as she shared a table with his girlfriend and her family, a table as far from the couriers as it was possible for a table to be.

Fireworks burst above the tower as the Midnight Plains finally eclipsed the core and the waiters left the floor as tables were moved to make way for dancing. In the noise and bustle that followed, Marroo felt himself lean in towards Dhret and heard his voice ask if she’d like to dance.

She bit her lip and nodded, then took his hand as he led her out among the rulers of their little corner of the worlds.

The touch of her hand in his was like an icon pressing itself into his spirit, and the way she looked at him when they stopped and turned to face each other on the floor made him wish he could sink stop time itself enjoy the moment.

“It’s been a long time since I danced.” He told her. She had to lean forward to hear him, even when he shouted over the noise of the band.

She shook her head as a whirling couple jostled them. “I don’t mind.” she shouted. She glanced at the passing couple. “But if we’re going to dance, let’s dance!” She pulled at the hand where they’d touched, and they danced.

This dance was nothing like his first time. Then he’d danced alone with another girl his age in the middle of an empty floor while a familiar piped music into their ears and he tried to follow the steps she taught him. Marroo was only a cultivator then. Now, as an adept, he felt the world moving within his aura, felt the other guests around him as flickering candle flames of breath. Marroo was graceless in his attempts to follow the steps he remembered from his first dance, but where he’d had to fight the instincts his father impressed in him, for killing, for defending, for keeping back, when he danced with Aiza years before, he found that he was unaware of anything this time around but the girl twirling at the end of his hands as though she’d been born dancing and the direction they had to move in order to avoid the shifting crowd.

She studied him in the break that came after their first song, as though seeing him for the first time. “You aren’t terrible.” She said when he raised his eyebrows at her.

He grinned stupidly and she reached up to push his bandanna a little higher on his forehead.

She scrunched her lips as she studied the effect. “Where’d you learn?” She asked.

Marroo shrugged. “Just picked it up.”

The band’s leader said something about what a nice night it was and how good the food and drink had been as the other musicians began to weave their magic over the night air. Marroo heard none of it as Dhret put one hand to his waist again and glanced in the direction of the band. “How’s another round sound?” She asked.

This time Marroo didn’t wait for her to pull him into the dance.